


Bronze & Marble

by StarlingGirl



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24080236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/pseuds/StarlingGirl
Summary: “We are all dying, Vax’ildan.”Vax thought he was better at hiding his fears than this.
Relationships: Shaun Gilmore/Vax'ildan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	Bronze & Marble

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short and sweet thing I wrote some time ago, because I'm always emotional about Vax and Gilmore, and what people think they understand, but don't understand at all.
> 
> Set some vague time after Vax becomes the Raven Queen's champion, and is still struggling to come to terms with it.

Gilmore’s fingers are gentle as they trace the first faint stains of bruising spreading like oil beneath Vax’s skin. They skim over the rise and fall of his ribs, just barely touching, checking over each mark and abrasion with a touch softer than Vax deserves. When Vax closes his eyes, Gilmore’s touch is like feathers. Like the flight-swift brush of wings, like just so many ravens.

“Well, you’ll live,” Gilmore says. His voice is warm, like desert sand and summer spices.

Vax opens his eyes. He’d already known that, of course — nothing but bruises, person and pride, but this feels good. That someone cares for him, is concerned, and with whom he need not pretend. A brave face is a weight almost too heavy to bear, some days.

“You should see the other guy,” he offers, along with a tired smile that lasts only as long as his face is visible, fading as he tugs a crumpled shirt over his head.

“I thought the ‘other guy’ was the ground,” Gilmore observes, wryly. Vax shrugs a shoulder as his head emerges. He doesn’t bother to smooth out the material, lets it stay wrinkled and risen and not-quite covering a bare strip of back, of ribs.

“Yeah. You should see it.”

Gilmore laughs. It’s low and just as gentle as his touch. Just as soothing.

“Oh, my smiling boy.” He cups Vax’s chin with a hand. His eyes are bronze-flecked, wine-dark. There’s something gold at the corner of Vax’s vision — a bracelet, catching the last rays of sunlight perhaps, or maybe it’s just Gilmore himself. That glow he has about him, the one that seems to lodge itself into Vax’s chest when he’s around. “Are you going to tell me why you’re really here?”

“What do you mean?” Almost petulant. Vax hadn’t thought to be seen through quite so easily. Gilmore lifts Vax’s chin with the very tip of a finger, uses the slightest pressure to turn his head this way, then that. Gilmore’s gaze slides over to Vax’s abandoned armour — dark raven feathers catching the light like dirty oil — and Vax knows he’s been made.

But Gilmore lets his hand fall away and says nothing. Only waits.

Robbed of that tender support, Vax’s head falls towards his chest — just as his heart falls towards his stomach. How can he put into words? How can anyone understand? The silence stretches long and brittle between them, and Vax wants to break it, but is afraid of the way it might shatter. Sharp edges will draw blood regardless of intent.

“We are all dying, Vax’ildan.”

Vax’s fingers curl tight against his palm, leave crooked crescent-moons in their wake, pale against paler skin.

“Do you know how many times I’ve been told that?” He doesn’t mean to sound as bitter as he does. “That death is a natural thing, that it comes for us all? That we are all dying, and only time stands between us and that dark door?”

“You misunderstand me, my darling.”

The intimacy of the affection stings, somehow. The way that the cold, dark blood had stung in his eyes, no matter how tight closed he kept them.

Gilmore leans forward again, and takes Vax’s hand in both of his own. His skin is warm where Vax’s is cool. Fingers twitch that want to return the embrace, but are forbidden. Some shred of propriety, some sliver of the unknown keep them from tangling themselves together. Vax looks at the place where their skin touches, and admires the beauty of it. The bronze and the marble, like something ancient and exquisite.

“We die a thousand deaths every day. Every moment, we leave a piece of ourselves behind and are born again. Death is not a destination. Death is only the becoming of something new.” Fingers lift, and trace the line of Vax’s jaw. Vax is riveted to these words, to the mouth that frames them. “Without those thousand deaths… Well, what is a man who does not change, but a mere statue of himself?”

It feels like clemency, the way that Gilmore looks at him, expecting nothing in return that is not freely given. Even now, after all that Vax has done.

He has struggled so hard against himself to accept death, to accept its place in his life. But he has never thought to accept it like this, as just another part of living. Ephemeral and endless, instead of brief and bounding, the end of all things.

When Vax takes a breath, the air that fills his lungs is — for the first time in far, far too long — sweet and clear and not that of a dusty crypt, still and bitter like the grave. Some shroud has been lifted from his eyes.

Gilmore tips his head, brows tilting in a question, and Vax feels like he’s seeing the man for the first time. His own hands come up — both of them, cupped full of joy — and clasp Gilmore’s own face.

“Thank you.”

Vax kisses him because it feels right. There is something new and birdling-fragile caged in his chest, but it is singing. Lips press against lips, reverent like a prayer, before he pulls back. Gilmore’s face is a picture, bearing upon it a melancholy, bittersweet sort of look painted in broad and unhidden strokes. The back of one finger brushes ever-so-gently against Vax’s cheek, and briefly, Gilmore’s eyes close. As though committing something precious to memory that he knows he will never receive again.

“No,” Vax whispers, thumb brushing against the corner of that sad smile, a clumsy attempt to brighten the darkness lingering in Gilmore’s lips. “No, no.” 

So hard to explain what he means in words. It’s  _ no, not like that, _ and  _ no, not this time, _ and  _ no, not with you _ . But these words are hard and so inadequate, and he does the only thing he can and kisses the man again.

Uncertain fingers rest at his waist — that same raven-feather touch — before Vax slides his own fingers to the back of Gilmore’s neck, careless of the way they tangle in long hair. That’s enough, it seems, to coax the firm touch of broad palms.

Gilmore pulls him close like all he's ever wanted is to hold Vax here, like this, in this moment. Vax folds himself closer still, deftly navigating the space between them so as to eliminate it entirely. Tucked against Gilmore, half curled on his legs and half stealing the space of the chair, Vax dispenses kisses with the exuberance of a man born again.

Which he is. Each time lips leave lips, he is death; met again, he is life. Breath steals breath, capturing from behind teeth only to gift it back, and Vax is sure that he could live forever in this moment.

But all moments must die for new ones to live, and Vax rests his forehead against Gilmore’s, breath catching somewhere between his heart and his throat, eyes closed. He cannot help but smile as fingers brush hair back behind his ear. 

He can sense the tremulous uncertainty and joyous relief in Gilmore’s touch—the same that courses through his own veins. A hundred hopeful moments, tucked away, are revisited once more. Gilmore’s lips press against his forehead, dazed by the simple act of being allowed to do so. When he speaks, Vax feels the words rumbling through Gilmore’s sternum, reverberating in amongst the borrowed beats of his heart.

“You should consider washing that armour, by the by. The feathers may be fabulous, but they smell  _ terrible. _ ” A laugh is startled from Vax’s chest, taking flight between them.

That too dies, fading fast.

It lived. And somehow, now, that’s all that matters.


End file.
